Last Minute Area

Around Christmas time, Jon surprised us with a bunch of new slab buildings full of puzzles in the center of the island.

Previously, there were only some empty ruins here, so the whole area was redesigned by the architects to accommodate the new puzzles. I attacked it first, about 3 weeks ago, adding a couple of puzzles myself and starting to model the three buildings on the right. Now, the entire art team is working on it. Luis is taking care of the entire left portion, which is still mostly low ruins, Eric is tackling the tower in the middle, and Alex is working on the building behind the tower, with the orange box sticking out of it. There is still one slab building up for grabs, but it's coming together very quickly for such a huge area!

Well, in previous post John wrote that they have all puzzles done… but that does not mean that they are done ;) They may have still play with engine, tweak stuff… from my experience, the closer you are to finish the more stuff you find you forgot or like to tweak… its up to their milestones…

Anyway I am also super excited about release date announcement :) checking the blog every day..

Personally I think that we dont get any ETA, like Jon says everywhere when he is asked about release date “it will be released when it is done” :)

In a weird way though, I’m really savoring this time in my life, because there will be a day where I’ve played through this game and solved all the puzzles. Considering the fact that this game is about the essence of discovery, I’m embracing this time where I don’t know what is going to happen in the game. Very happy and grateful to everyone who is a part of The Witness Team and all the fans who post here (and have been for the past few years) on a regular basis! Wish we could have some celebratory meetup one day! (I’ll make t-shirts!)

People say I play discovery games strangely: I try not to progress in order to forestall the time when I’ve discovered everything.
I always considered the sense of discovery as synonymous with that of mystery. Both are very important to those who play these games, but it is interesting to realize that one is detrimental to the other. You have to be curious in order to be enthralled in the face of mystery, but it is that curiosity that drives discovery, and it is discovery that puts and end to a sense of wonder.

So, like you, I relish the time that I don’t understand the rules of the game, and I haven’t explored its corners. At the same time, I long for catharsis.

Amazing work. I love how much time and dedication the team is putting into crafting every inch with such love for detail. As someone who has done a bit of modelling as a hobby, I know how much effort goes into every piece, so when I applaud you for your hard work, I am being completely sincere. Keep at it!

I intend to show this to my 65 year old father who isn’t a gamer at all, but has a liking for puzzle games. Particularly some of the old-school ones. I am very confident he will love this piece of art, but there’s only one way to find out!

Good luck, and I am looking forward to uncovering all the secrets you are no doubt putting into this :)

There’s something kind of magical about seeing this sort of freedom to design in the face of construction deadlines and ‘locked in place content.’ We often perceive video games with simpler graphics as being somehow ‘inferior’ to hyper detailed realistic games, but really, it seems to me that this sort of restraint allows freedom to play with design in the late stage of a project. That’s something we seem to have lost as games have had more and more art assets in them.

This area is not really such a huge surprise, since it was always known that we needed to go back and finish it at some point. The surprise is mainly the actual content of the area, which was mostly designed in December. Prior to this I’d had some other ideas about what this area was for, but they did not appear to be panning out, and I didn’t want the game to have a weak spot in such a way.

Am I reading into the title correctly when I think “Last Minute Area” means the game is nearing completion? I understand if you aren’t ready to give a release date or anything, but it’d be great if I knew whether or not I should board the hype train yet. This is probably my most anticipated game of the year.

Jonathan…can you please just tell us what quarter you will release this game? We are all dying here. We don’t want you to give us an exact date (we understand that you can’t say at this point), but please give us a ballpark timeframe. I have been holding my breath for this game. Please don’t let us get to the point where we get frustrated from the lack of info and then give up on this game. I think that would be a major mistake on your part. Come on bro!

Nice. Synecdoche New York is a good movie. A lot of people didn’t like it. I say this without trying to sound like a disgruntled elitist, but it’s always pleasant to find more reasonably intelligent life out there. Cheers.

Yes, it’s not easy. And considering how most people treat me (and each other), I don’t even try to not be elitist any more. How could anyone with a heart not be? Seeing all those people treat one another so badly, even though it could easily not be like that (as evidenced by the few who do try to do good by others and the relationships they have).

But I find the movie to actually not be such a good indicator because if you check out the imdb ratings – it actually seems to have done very well. Maybe you just came across a bunch of bad examples?
(My experience is that usually nobody even knows what the hell I’m talking about when I mention the movie.)

I didn’t even realize that I posted that not even a day before his death! That’s a bit creepy. Especially since I really admired him but still hadn’t thought about or mentioned him anywhere for quite a while before posting this link…

PS4 and PC version will released simultaneously. We don’t know the release date but we speculate: late 2014 or early 2015.
iOS version release will soon follow.
No, you can not pre-order the game. Yes, it will be digital released only.
On PS3 and PS4. You can turn off Trophy notification/pop-ups, same with messages. But we are required to have achievements in Steam and Trophies on Playstation.
No, there is no part 2 to that video.